Posts by Richard Aston
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Good to see you bring this debate out on Media 7 russell. I greatly admired your restraint with Larry Baldock - I could see you were tempted to apply some good parental correction to the man who of course did not make any sense. Brian Edwards mirrored my response so well - considering what needs to be changed in the world, considering the shear scale of social problems needing leadership this man choose to dedicate a year of his life to secure the right to hit his children.
Its too crazy to consider a real motivation so what was Larry Baldock's motivation ? As that young herald reporter ?Nippet? suggested was it all just a PR exercise to leverage profile for a christian right political movement ? Hey that I can understand. -
But the media in my opinion has been part of the problem , constant use of the words "anti smacking" when it wasn't a law specifically against smacking and as you point out Russel journalists championing cases they no nothing about - for what? Ratings and readership numbers.
The point for me in voting YES was about setting the bar of acceptable behavior much higher. Yes lots of parents may choose to lightly smack their children and while its not ideal it probably does no real damage but... what is a smack? Its so subjective for many - I have heard stories of beatings with plastic pipes as being a light smack or normal "corrective" parenting. -
Piano playing.
Best tips for late bloomers?Just play it as badly as you possible can until something sweet emerges.
The late American poet Charles Bukowski had some great advice in the title of a poem -
"Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until The Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit" -
I give money to a guy thats often outside the New world supermarket in Newtown. He plays a saxophone he's made out of bits of bamboo.
Steven - Was it the saxophone that got you or the fact it was made from bamboo ?
Hell I'd give money to anyone with the balls to play a bamboo saxophone outside a supermarket . -
Thanks to Jan Logie for bringing the charity view in here. I too run a charity, Big Buddy, and like Jan I have a mixed reaction to this discussion. We work hard to run a lean flat organisation but unlike Kidscan we don’t distribute “stuff” or lease shiny cars we are social workers connecting volunteer men with fatherless boys so most (70%) of our costs go to paying our people to do this work. Its real social work that takes real skills so we need to pay reasonable money for our people. Yet in the minds of some funders salaries are overheads and are frowned on, go figure.
We have to advertise to get volunteers; we keep our advertising down to less then 10% of budget but it’s a cost. The recession has hit us hard so now for the first time we will be reaching out to the broader community to ask for donations. We are doing it as a last resort considering the apparent lack of government funds and the shear difficulty in dealing with some of the gaming trusts (Hey Russell if I may, the whole can of worms called the gaming industry (what’s industrious about it?) needs a post all by itself.
Anyway to attract donations we need to get our name, message and story out there and this can cost serious money. We are competing with the big charities with big budgets. The big question around promotion costs is how much is too much before the real outcomes don’t justify the spend? We are social workers not marketers so we sort help from an advertising agency The Pond, who are doing the work pro bono but we will still have to pay for advertising space It’s a hard call from this side of the charity fence, we would really like to just be doing the work but when I am out there hustling for money I keep my integrity intact by remembering the fatherless boys we serve, I’m doing it for them not me.
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Re The boot camp idea - Paula Bennett's "experts can say what they like, but we think they work." and David's "Based on what?"
I work in the social field and my initial reaction to boot camps was they don't work for anyone except the people running them - they seem to really get off of them. Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft said boot camps just make them fitter so they can run away from the cops faster. etc etc
But I have been doing some research on this and while it is generally true that most boot camps have neutral or negative results some do have positive results. US programmes like Vision Quest get positive results and it seem the key is less hard core military style and a more individual therapeutic approach and especially a longer term follow up. This is supported by evidence.
I am coming to think the wilderness experience carefully done can help crack through to the core of who you are - a deconstructing experience really but the challenge then is how do we help someone reconstruct themselves - in their way.
I have heard from contacts in the military they are privately horrified at the idea - they know the classic military approach was not designed to reform people - in my opinion its designed to turn them into obedient killers. They are clearly not the right people for the job. It seems it will happen regardless of the wailing and gnashing of academics - so I see it as a opportunity to do it differently and in that regard I agree with Paula Bennett - but do we have the creative courage to shape boot camps into barefoot camps? To use wilderness experiences as a starting point toward change rather than a punitive punishment that gives the hard liners a sense of short term satisfaction. -
Aro- as
Bro -
yet another
No play Coldplay.
Today Key pays -
Back onto the anti-Electoral Finance Bill crusade.
Whats with the NZ Herald and this? They have been banging away at the Electoral Finance Bill for a few weeks now and now their crusade is front page news (in red!). Its not front page news! its a newspaper using it's pages to try to influence public thinking, yeah I know half the paper is full of ads trying to do that but I dunno call me old fashion, I thought journalism was meant to report the facts, the events and news in the world not try to change the facts and news in the world.
I don't have a position either way on the bill itself but I am becoming increasingly irritated at the Heralds overt politicizing.
Whats the hell is behind this? -
Stadium smadium who cares... Large amounts of money being spent on another sports venue it seems an appalling waste of public money.
I smell another Britomart ie large public building project set up for dubious reasons when all we needed was trains running on time.
Rugby should be played on a big paddock somewhere